Life in Hollywood, below-the-line

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Sunday, April 22, 2012

The Quiet Man

Reflections of Clouds on the Water Lily Pond
Claude Monet

(Photo by Trish Mayo, taken at the NY Museum of Modern Art)

Thanks to pilot season, it’s
been crazy-busy in my little corner of Hollywood. After two and a half weeks of non-stop work rigging,
lighting, and shooting a pilot, the jam-packed schedule had us wrap the
stage over Saturday and Sunday of Easter Weekend – a first
for me – to clear the decks for another show coming in the following Monday.
After a few days helping out on yet another pilot, I found myself back on that same stage day-playing for the entire week on the new show,
running power and hanging the very same lamps on the pipe grid again.

There's a reason so many of us working below-the-line feel such a kinship with Sisyphus...

This job was even crazier than the pilot. With a compressed schedule (the set construction crew -- delayed by the previous pilot -- was already a week behind on Day One), we ended up lighting sets almost before the
walls were all the way up.

Still, we hit it hard and made rapid progress. Once
again I was amazed at how much three juicers and a good dimmer op
(running and placing power for us) can get done in a relatively short period of time – and this
while working amid even more confusion than normal, what with set
dressing, carpenters, painters, juicers and grips all working right on top of one
another. With only eight days to get the
whole show up, dressed, lit, and rehearsed before the first blocking-and-shoot day,
the pressure was on.

What a clusterfuck. Sometimes the absurd nature of this
business just blows me away... but that’s Hollywood.

Still, there were moments
of grace amid the billowing clouds of chaos. Halfway through the week, a new
painter joined the construction crew; an older man with close-cropped hair,
glasses, and an aura of quiet concentration.
It took me a while to realize that he wasn’t there to help the other
painters do the set walls, door frames, and trim – he was a specialist brought
in to paint a backdrop mural of a forest outside the double windows of a set that appeared
to be an office or study. His work seemed routine at first, rolling several coats of pale blue paint on a ten-by-thirty
foot wall of plywood, but once that base coat was dry, he began using a surprisingly large and (to me) clumsy-looking brush to create the most ethereal and delicate mural I’ve seen in a long time.
Slowly, painstakingly, hour by hour, the image came into focus. Every time I passed by it looked better, revealing
layers of depth and detail that transformed this flat slab of plywood into a leafy
three dimensional landscape -- a world
unto itself.

Clearly this was no
ordinary set painter – the man was an artist.

That term -- "artist" -- gets thrown around
a lot in this town, but other than in reference to bullshit-and-scam artists (and Hollywood is chock full ofthem), it rarely applies. A case can be
made for the top tier of screenwriters (film and television) earning that
label, along with a few truly talented directors over the years, but the vast
majority of Industry workers are craftsmen/women, at best.* This is not to denigrate their considerable skills,
but if true art is built on a foundation of craftsmanship, the reverse doesn’t
always hold.

I stopped to compliment his work,
which led to introductions, shaking hands, and a series of brief
conversations over the next few days.

“I’m a dinosaur,” he said,
with a tight grin, then grudgingly admitted to having once been a young man who made a serious study of painting. Prodded by my questions, he
spoke of a day many years ago spent studying Monet’s “Reflections of Clouds on the Water Lily Pond” at the New York
Museum of Modern Art.

“I
sat there all day long, just looking, blocking everything else out of my field of vision, concentrating
on that painting.
Eventually I could see everything on that canvas – the sky above, deep
down into the water, everything. It was
wonderful. Monet knew what he was
doing, the bastard. He created a whole universe in that one painting. Afterwards I felt like going home and breaking all my brushes.”

That last line was uttered with the same rueful grin as before, expressing the complex blend of admiration and frustration every would-be artist feels when confronted with a true master of the form. But if this man (who requested not to be identified here) didn't turn into another Monet, he's a damned fine artist -- one of the most impressive I've ever seen in this town. Witnessing that mural come to life over the span of three days was the best thing about my entire work week.

The cruel irony -- ah, Hollywood -- is that next week the production designer will have his minions install a forest of fake trees ("greens") outside the windows of that set, thus blocking most of the mural. Since the windows of the set are made of pebbled glass similar to the sort used in bathroom showers to protect a bather's modesty, that man's wonderful work -- his beautiful painting -- will go unnoticed and unappreciated by the viewing public when this show finally airs. And even if those windows were flung wide open and the greens removed, only a small patch of his mural would be visible on a television screen at home, hardly enough to impress any viewers.

Besides, the show is a multi-camera comedy, not a documentary about the painting of a mural. It is what it is.

And so once again I'm reminded that most of the real artists end up getting screwed here in Hollywood. It's been that way ever since the movies first came out west for the cheap land, abundant light, and good weather. Yes, artists of all stripes can work and earn a modest living cranking out movies and television in this town, but their true talent is seldom allowed to flower, much less adequately appreciated. After all, movies are made to sell barrels of soft drinks and giant tubs popcorn, while television has always been in the business of hawking soap, beer, and underarm deodorant -- not art. Only a fool would hope for, let alone expect, anything else.

I understand all that -- the reality of our business -- but maybe I'm just a fool at heart...

* Everybody will have their own list, but mine includes Coppola, Scorsese, Friedkin, and Tarantino among those who represent the real thing...

Me too -- I'd never seen a painter create such a beautiful scenic backdrop right there on stage. It was amazing. Whatever else happened that week is already long gone, like water under the bridge, but I won't forget watching that painting come to life.

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About Me

Born and raised in a rural pocket of the San Francisco Bay Area, I graduated from UC Santa Cruz clutching a degree in Aesthetic Studies. Armed with this paper sword, boundless ignorance, and a vision of Hollywood heavily influenced by the movie “Shampoo” (and seriously, what guy didn’t want to be Warren Beatty back then?), I proceeded to march on Hollywood in the spirit of a young man seeking adventure, a living -- and if Lady Luck deigned to smile upon me, perhaps a small fortune. Adventure, I found. A living, I made, but although Lady Luck has thus far kept me safe from harm on the road-raging freeways and bullet-riddled streets of Los Angeles, that elusive fortune remains but a shiny mirage on the road ahead.
I'm now playing out the string on a thirty year career in set lighting, trying to hang on until the bitter end.